


Cloak

by paynesgrey



Series: Turn and Face the Strange [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, One-Shot, Spoilers, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paynesgrey/pseuds/paynesgrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara asks the Doctor about their bond. Fluff, angst. Twelve x Clara. Series 8 spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloak

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "dubiously" prompt at the Summer Mini Challenge on LJ.

Clara often wonders if the Doctor feels dirty when he lies to her, when he refuses to see her and yet still yearns for her.

Early on, of course, she has doubts about him; she wonders if he’s the same person, the one who wore the bow tie and kissed the top of her head to comfort her and ease her fears.

_There is no doubt now,_ she thinks. The Doctor isn’t just lying to her; he’s lying to himself.

One never expects the self-loathing of their own hero, but she realizes it makes sense with him. The Doctor has endured a lot of heavy pasts, spanning lifetimes all encased in one body. He’s lost loved ones and people he's cared for in only minutes of first meeting them. 

All of that has weighed on him, a heavy gravity that consumes within.

Of course, she’s being presumptuous. Madame Vastra erroneously named her the one person who knows the Doctor best. Clara doubts such a person exists, but she tries, and though some days she feels ragged, from dashing about the universe with the Doctor to quiet yet anxious dates with Danny, she squashes any doubts she should stay with the Doctor at all.

Her dubious thoughts fall by the wayside, but she feels them resurface ever so often. The Doctor sometimes starts out cold, unfeeling and out of touch. She wonders if he can really see her anymore when he looks at her, or if he’s put on a show in the other body, pretending to see her - pretending to _like_ her.

The Doctor - brand new and no-nonsense, gives her everything frankly and in the most bald-faced ways. Clara isn’t prepared for the starkness, and the lies are sometimes harder to detect.

But the Doctor still lies. He shapes his false landscapes differently now, but she can still see through the cloak of himself, of his secrets and self-deprecation. Maybe that’s why he stays with her. Maybe that’s why Vastra thinks she knows him best.

Clara doesn’t really believe in herself to know the Doctor, but she feels she has to.

“Bonded,” she says to him before one of their trips. The word is out of the blue, but it originates from a string of her spiraling thoughts. 

“Sorry?” he says. “Didn’t hear you.” He’s planning their next journey, whether they’re breaking into banks, disrupting the chaos of prisons or saving a solar system of doomed orphans. He’s pulling her away to something, minutes before another date with Danny, as usual.

She wonders if she should bother, but Clara really likes Danny. He’s grounded and awkward and _human_ , and not a leaf blowing through time and space. He’s not a man that changes so readily, from a smiling, hugging, dashing hero to a dark, jumbled conundrum of an alien.

But the Doctor has always been an alien.

“I said _bonded_. I was thinking and talking about us,” Clara says bravely. The Doctor doesn’t like to talk about “us”; he only likes to pull her along to the next adventure and leave her breathless without a chance to really think about him, or see him beyond the surface of his oily, uncharted depths.

She’s seen every incarnation of him before this, and though in echos her memories are hazy, she remembers each piece of the Doctor and how he’s formed. This Doctor now - this version - is a brand new mesh that has risen of the ashes. It’s as if the one she’s always known has exploded into puzzle pieces, only to be haphazardly glued back together with the missing pieces hidden under a rug or lost underneath a sofa.

The Doctor takes advantage of her pause and says nothing. She can feel the tension between them thickening, and it only becomes noticeable when the TARDIS itself begins to wheeze in complaint.

They aren’t even landing and it’s squawking at her, and the Doctor looks around the center console briefly and meets Clara’s eyes. She shakes her head. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to offend her,” Clara says. 

“Force of habit,” the Doctor says. “Now, what were you saying?”

“Nothin,” Clara says, and she moves around the center console to his side. She furrows her brow and looks at the screen. “Where are we going next?”

“Mud baths, spa planet with over four thousand different types of rejuvenating mud, some of them even hallucinogenic.”

“Really,” Clara says intrigued. “Thought were going to do something illegal again.”

She sees him pause, and then think about it. “Oh, we don’t have to go to the mud planet.”

“Well, I don’t necessarily care about illegal, as long as it’s not on Earth,” Clara says with a light giggle. The Doctor smiles lightly, which pleases her as the tension starts to dull.

“Mud planet it is,” he says quietly, and he pulls the appropriate levers.

“Doctor, why are you doing this? One minute I’m telling you that we’re bonded - scary subject for you, I know - and then you to whisk me off on a vacation. What gives?” she asks.

“It’s not scary, Clara; it’s terrifying,” he says, and continues, “But you need the rest, obviously. You look awful, living two lives. I keep forgetting that you’re a companion I haven’t kidnapped to spend all the time with me. You have that teaching thing too.”

“You keep forgetting?” she scoffs. “Well, I guess it’s the thought that counts, Doctor.”

Sounds of the TARDIS fill the space between them, but something bothers Clara, and she feels she has to ask.

“What’s so terrifying of being bonded to me, Doctor?” Clara asks, and he looks at her, his eyebrows crossing again at the displeasure of even accessing his safely stored emotions. Clara sighs, feeling herself meeting an inevitable roadblock with him again. “You can lie, if you must.”

“But you would know it right away, wouldn’t you?” he says bitingly. He turns toward her and she watches him keep his hands at his sides, though the energy within his frame betrays his own intentions. She knows he misses those delicate moments of contact. She knows that he even denies himself the pleasure of it, if out of self-hatred or fear. He doesn’t want her to leave him, and he wants her to _see him_ , so clearly as if he’s never changed faces.

Yet, he doesn’t want her to love him, and she assumes that he considers that one of his many mistakes - one he doesn’t want to keep making. Though his heart, his impulses and his regard always betray him. Clara feels a surge of disappointment - almost pity that she wants to transform this in him. He’s denying himself so much, and even though she is confident they are bonded, he denies sharing his feelings for her. Yet, much of his anger stems from this self-loathing and denial, and in the end it only makes him appear unkind, removed and always alone.

Clara knows he’s not like this; she’s not making excuses for him. The Doctor does well enough to make excuses on his own.

But he still gets jealous. He still tries to impress her and capture her heart with his cleverness and heroism. He still tries to prove himself to her; posturing like a silly, attention-craving child to have that last word, to impress everyone in the room despite the judgement he later reserves for himself.

“Right.” She sighs again. “You don’t have to say anything since I know when you’re lying. If you’re not ready…”

“I’m not,” he quickly replies, but he seems to stare into her very depths, cautioning her and yet reaching out in kind. _The Doctor is his own contradiction,_ Clara thinks, and even as infuriating as that can be, she finds that irresistible.

“You agree with me, though,” Clara says, looking away from his intense stare. “We’re bonded.”

“Always.”

She doesn’t see him reach out his hand. She only feels his fingers lace into hers, tightening with that fierce longing that he denies himself now but knows he’ll show her later. _When he’s ready,_ she thinks, and Clara can’t help but exhale the hitch in her breath as his hand remains in hers. She moves forward, softly, lightly, and rests her head against his solid chest.

His scent is old, yet when she closes her eyes she wonders if this is the smell of the sea of space. Loving him, patiently waiting for him to come back to her, is just like watching the birth of a star.

“Doctor,” she says against his shirt. He tenses, but he makes no motion to move. The touch must be agonizing for him, but Clara knows, it’s also wonderful, and her warmth is what he truly needs.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and his breath trickles like stardust against her hair.

“I know you had plans for us today to go to the mud planet - and we can do that some other time, but can we take a detour?” she asks. She raises her head, and she meets his clear eyes looking down at her, waiting.

“Where do you want to go today, Clara?” he asks, and her voice is as inviting as the first time he’s asked her that.

“I wanna see the birth of twin stars,” she asks, her smile widening. “Know any good ones?”

His small smile and nod gives her hope.

_That’s why we’re together, Doctor. We’re bonded like twin stars._

 

END


End file.
